


Silver Linings

by merisunshine36



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merisunshine36/pseuds/merisunshine36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly fluffy snippets of Aaron and Marta hanging out and doing things other than dodging bullets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just before the flight to Manila, Marta buys Aaron a little token of her appreciation, and Aaron tries really hard not to be attracted to her.

"This one is yours," Marta says. She sets a pint of rocky road ice cream and a cheap plastic spoon next to the disposable camera Aaron is working on. "But if you ask nicely I'll give you some of my dulce de leche."

Aaron cracks the camera case open before looking up at her, and is surprised at the nervous smile on her face, her expression still warm despite the slight puffiness around her eyes. She's still afraid of him, and maybe she should be.

"Ice cream?" he says, and then, "Did you know that one of the Ben and Jerry's guys had a double bypass?" because he doesn't know what else to say. For a while, after they started him on chems and before he was deployed on his first mission, he spent the entirety of his free time inhaling every piece of useless knowledge he could get his hands on. 

"I think the customary response is 'thank you'," Marta replies, and tosses the little envelope containing her passport photos next to the camera. Aaron wonders if she remembered to keep her head down and avoid the security cameras. June always forgot about that part.

He nods, chastened. "Yeah, thanks."

Aaron blinks blearily at the fake passports spread out on the hotel desk. After weeks of surviving the worst Nature had to throw at him, doing this kind of detail work is soothing. He's dry, and warm, and they have enough of a lead on Byer's men that they can take a few hours to relax and just breathe a little.

"Hey," Marta says, placing a hand on his shoulder. There's a pool of condensation beneath his ice cream and a slight stiffness in his fingers--he's been sitting here for longer than he thought. "Why don't you take a break for a while? Your ice cream's gonna melt."

They sit cross-legged on the bed together and watch bad late-night television, both of them too keyed up to get into any of the jokes. The bedspread is scratchy and the mattress full of lumps, but it's still above and beyond the kind of place he usually catches forty in. Aaron's ice cream is tasty enough, but he picks around all of the nuts. He holds each bite on his tongues as it melt and wonders if he should ask Marta to cut her hair before they leave. Maybe it won't make a difference, but maybe it will.

"Want some?" Marta asks, and sticks her spoon in his face. Her bangs slide down into her eyes, and he bites back on the urge to reach out and brush them away, just like he has at every appointment they've ever had together.

Aaron opens his mouth expectantly. Marta rolls her eyes but sticks the spoon in anyway, and laughs when he takes advantage of her distraction to switch their pints. The caramel is intensely sweet, soft and cool (and completely without nuts, which always get stuck in his teeth). He scrapes his spoon across the bottom of the carton at the end, and doesn't miss the way Marta's eyes darken a little when he licks the last of it off his thumb.

"Thank you," Aaron tells her, and they both know that this time, he's not talking about dessert.


	2. Chapter 2

"You wanna try?" Aaron holds up the bag of wriggling eels, treasure from his dive. He's halfway joking, because there's no way he expects Marta's fledgling black ops skills to include wrestling underwater snakes. "Water's a lot better than sitting around all day."

The number of things for a scientist to do on a tiny fishing boat with twice its usual passenger load is only slightly greater than zero. Marta exhausted her usefulness for the day after she'd made up a little book of math exercises for the captain's son Joseph in exchange for his giving her a crash course in net repair. For the last ten years of her life, she was at the top of her game, and now she's at the bottom of the heap.There aren't that many job prospects for those who are legally dead.

"I can't swim," Martha mutters, and hopes the flush of embarrassment creeping up her face is covered up by her perpetual sunburn. The sky has been relentlessly blue the entire time they've been out here, forcing her to sweat out each day in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. "I never learned how and now it's easier to just...I don't do water."

"You don't do--" Aaron bites down on his bottom lip, puts his hands on his hips where his boxer-briefs ride low and wet. Marta is pretty sure he's only wearing them for her benefit, although they don't leave much to the imagination. "You know we're on a boat, right? Come on, Doc, let me teach you how. We've got all this water and nowhere to go, and the kid is about to throw himself overboard if you give him one more lecture on long division."

Marta shrugs, and doesn't mention how she'd kept her eyes firmly on the gangplank when they were boarding. Aaron stares at her for a few minutes, but lets its go.

He makes quick work of the eels with the knife he keeps at his side, pulling the intestines out with his fingers and frying all the edible parts on their tiny cookstove with a little bit of oil. Aaron always gives her more than she can eat, which she now pushes back in his direction. At the other end of the boat, she can hear Joseph's father scolding him about something, and Joseph replying in that petulant tone that is the hallmark of long-suffering children everywhere. Marta doesn't quite believe this is her life. Every night she goes to sleep, and waits to wake up in her own bed, cursing the horrible traffic on her way to work.

Aaron ambushes her a second time later that afternoon, while she's leaning against the warped wooden railing of the lower deck trying to recall meditation exercises from a dvd she saw once. He climbs up and sits on top of the railing itself, eyes still red and hair sticking up in stiff points from all the saltwater. Marta hesitates for a moment, then scoots closer toward him until his broad shoulders bump against her own. It's not like anyone is looking, anyway. She still feels a little possessive thrill just being around him. Aaron Cross is her best attempt at a perfect human being, and he's the only one left of his kind. 

"When I was a kid," he says, "they put all of us from the group home in a bus and took us to the pool once a year. I always stayed in the shallow end because the one time I went out deep I sunk like a bag of rocks." 

"I know what you're doing," Marta says, suspicious.

"Is it working? Because if it isn't, I have more sad stories where that one came from."

There's a curl of brown paint next to her fingers, she focuses on peeling it off. "So who taught you?"

Aaron opens his mouth, then squints, struggling to come up with the correct memory. "I don't remember," he says after a while, quieter than he was before. He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales loudly. "Some things are still a little scrambled up there."

He's as close as they could get to perfect, but it's still not close enough.

Marta reaches out and squeezes his hand, and if it hurts a little when he squeezes her hand back, she doesn't say anything about it. A breeze picks up and tickles her nose with the fishy smell that's embedded in every surface of the boat. They've fought tooth and nail to get this far. And if Marta's at the bottom now, where else is there to go but up?

"Let me drown and I'll haunt you for the rest of your life." It's an idle threat, but it feels good to make light of things for once.

"I'll hold you to it, Dr. Shearing," he says, and even though it was a joke, he looks serious enough that Marta lets her eyes drop after a second. Aaron pushes himself over the edge of the boat, disappearing beneath the surface with barely a splash. After a few seconds he reappears, wiping the water out of his eyes. "You coming in? I'll catch you, I promise."

A big part of her wants to say _no_ \--she could wait until they're at a beach, or a pool, or some other environment where Marta could at least pretend that she'd have a chance of getting back to land if she needed to. Instead, she pulls her shirt over her head and kicks her jeans off, takes a deep breath and jumps right in.


End file.
